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I’ve followed Alec Baldwin’s life and career for many years now, because it’s not actually possible not to.  I like him O.K. as an actor, I agree with his political viewpoints more often than not, and think he is definitely the sanest and the most talented one among his brothers.  Sure, there are times he’s acted like a dick around the paparazzi; that’s not exactly unique in Hollywood.

So, anyway, everybody’s talking about this open letter he wrote, in which he said he’s going to stop talking to reporters and doing talk shows and shit because he doesn’t need the agro, and he said some less than diplomatic things about a lot of people.

Well, I thought I’d read through the letter and then mock it a bit in this blog, because if there’s one thing I find ridiculous, it’s actors bitching about publicity.  My attitude is, you live by the camera, you die by the camera, that’s the life you chose, live with it, you’ve got to take the bad with the good, if you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen, there are plenty of younger, hungrier actors who are perfectly ready and willing to pose for the pictures and shmooze with the reporters.

So, I read the letter.  A breath of fresh air, is what it was.  I thought the line about Anderson Cooper and Andrew Sullivan being from the Gay Department of Justice was actually pretty funny, I agree with him that TMZ is a slander sheet and just because they say he’s a homophobe is no reason at all to assume he is.  Also, I’m still a bit disturbed at Anderson Cooper after he was caught faking footage from Syria – nothing too egregious, just making it look like they were a lot closer to the actual fighting than they were.  That story got buried quick.

Alec Baldwin

I am not worried that he said bad things about Shia LeBeouf.  Everybody is saying bad things about Shia LeBeouf.

I totally agree with him that Joe Scarborough is neither funny nor eloquent and Mika Brezezinski is a bobble head.  Also, I totally agree with him that Arianna Huffington has blown a good thing.  I suspect she never realized from the start the tremendous thing she had put together, so it’s not really a surprise that she’s let it turn to shit.

He didn’t completely condemn Rachel Maddow, he admitted that she does a good show, he just said that she isn’t quite as passionate about truth when the cameras are turned off.  If, indeed, she’s the one who got him fired, I can understand him being pissed off at her.

Likewise, he didn’t actually condemn Bill deBlasio, he just said he was saddened that deBlasio is not talking to him any more.  Baldwin has become deBlasio’s Reverend Wright.

I wish deBlasio luck as mayor and Baldwin the best of luck in his future acting career.  And, I’d like to see more big stars write letters like this.

Well, some really good news out of Colorado, and the same will no doubt apply to Washington and, eventually, every  state that decides to legalize marijuana.  Sales have been so brisk that the state expects to take in way more money in taxes than they expected.  Up to $100 million, which is not shabby at all for a state which has a population of just a little over 5 million people.  They could, if they wanted to, just give every resident of the state $20, which would be nice, but wouldn’t go very far.

Half of them would probably just spend it on more pot, but that’s putting the money back into the economy and it gets taxed again, so it’s a win-win.

$100 million is probably enough to fix up any old, derelict, abandoned homes in the state (giving some people jobs in the process, again, pumping money back into the economy) and give those homes to homeless people, thus solving the problems of homelessness, urban blight, and joblessness.  Win-win-win.

$100 million would be enough to set up a really nice public transportation system in all of Colorado’s major cities (which is like 2 or 3 cities), with comfortable, electric busses.  A few people would get jobs as drivers, maybe you could even go totally high class and hire some stewardesses.  So, jobs, improving the environment, getting all the stoners off the road (really, most stoners would be very happy with this solution), and once it’s set up it would probably  pay for itself, maybe even make a profit.  Win-win-win-win.

$100 million could buy nice, new computers for all Colorado classrooms, repair all the potholes in Colorado roads, or create a few new state parks.

So, what do you think they’ll spend the money on?  According to this article, Governor John Hickenlooper’s spending plan included $45.5 million for youth use prevention, $40.4 million for substance abuse treatment and $12.4 million for public health.

So, nearly half of this tax windfall is going to go on bumper stickers, T-shirts, and a bit of overtime pay for cops to go to elementary schools and lie their asses off telling kids how evil marijuana is.  Lose-lose.

First of all, let me admit that I’m not an expert on Ukraine.  Unfortunately, I’ve never been there.  I know that, as a Slavic nation, they have incredibly beautiful women and the favorite national pastime is probably getting blind drunk.  Due to their location, I would guess the beverages of choice are vodka and beer.  But, if my guesses as to their political situation are naive, I would be glad to hear from people who live there, or have some personal stake in what’s happening.

Inside the Former President’s House

At least, it seems, Ukraine is getting a bit of a break.  Yulia Tymoshenko, the cute lady with the funny braids, has been released from prison.  Viktor Yanukovych, the President, has resigned and his current whereabouts are unknown.  As the  general public got an unexpected  view of his mansion, the rumors that he was massively corrupt were confirmed. It is the Hearst Castle of the Steppe, apparently.  An interim government, headed by Oleksandr Turchynov, has promised new elections by May 25th.

So, they are about where Egypt was, after the first wave of rioting led to Mubarak’s ouster and imprisonment.  Unfortunately, like Egypt, their problems remain.  There is still a cultural, economic, social and linguistic division between the Euro-leaning West and the Russian leaning East.  The May election is likely to re-emphasize that and, no matter how many recounts are done, one side or the other is going to be deeply disappointed with the results.

That is the one thing all Americans and Europeans (and Russians) would do well to remember.  There are two sides to this story.  Sure, that video of the beautiful and brave Ukrainian girl appealing to the world for help was powerful, but both sides can play that game.  Both sides aren’t likely to get the same coverage in the Western press, of course, but both sides can play that game.

I saw this quote today from Susan Rice, Barack Obama’s security advisor: “It’s not in the interests of Ukraine or of Russia or of Europe or the United States to see a country split.”

I beg to differ.  It’s not in anybody’s interest to see a violent split, a rupture, a civil war.  But an amicable split, a no fault divorce, like that between The Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993, would be to Russia’s benefit, because they’d find a friend and an ally on their southern border, it would be to the benefit of both the newly formed East Ukraine, and the newly formed West Ukraine, because not so many people would get killed, and they could keep an open border between them, because lots of people have friends and family on both sides. It would be advantageous to the EU, because West Ukraine would probably be a better EU candidate than all of Ukraine.

Like I said, though, I’m no expert.  If anybody can explain to me why this wouldn’t work, I’d be glad to hear it.

A long time ago, in the  generations that followed the Great Flood, mankind gathered in the land of Shinar, and they said “Lo,” because people always said stuff like “Lo,” back in those days, “let us come together and speak one language and build a great tower unto heaven.” God looked down and he said “WTF?  If these people can do this, there is nothing they won’t be able to do.  And he came down from

Tower of Babel

Heaven and screwed them over royally, making everybody speak a different language, so people split and went every  which way and the tower did not get built, which pleased God greatly, because that’s just the kind of guy God is.

Now, many thousands of years later, mankind is ready to make another stab at the tower.  I am very excited about it.  Check out this article for a little bit more of the science and engineering of the Space Elevator.

Space Elevator

I’m just knocked out by the possibility of it.  It will become cheap and easy to get supplies and new crew members for the Martian Colony.  Shuttlecraft will take off daily to mine the asteroid belt and the moons of Jupiter.  Probes will be sent to Venus, and then ships which can hover in the outer atmosphere and hoover up the atmosphere for rocket fuel.  Tourist  will transit from there to nearby space stations and the moon.  Soon, a chain of luxury hotels will be orbiting the Earth, with zero gravity volley ball courts, zero gravity saunas, zero gravity discotheqes, and much, much more.  There is nothing we won’t be able to do.

O.K., this piece in Slate Magazine is  a seemingly pointless  piece of fluff.  It does not address the problems in Ukraine or Venezuela, which are the guilty concern topics of the day, because nobody even wants to talk about Syria any more.  The article does not take any position on global warming, or suggest a solution to the problem of income disparity.

Gerry and the Pacemakers, 1964

That’s cool, I get tired of talking about that shit, too.

It’s the kind of article we are seeing more and more of in this day of massively accumulated information.  We can collate statistics like mad and see patterns where we’d never seen patterns before, and there are patterns in everything.  (My favorite facebook joke of the day.  The B. in Bernard B. Mandlebrot stands for Bernard B. Mandlebrot.  lol.)

The article talked about the most common rhymes used  in pop songs (and I’ll bet it’s not much different in  country songs, or folk  songs, or any genre.  Rhyme is rhyme.  And apparently, the most popular rhyme in music is you and do.  When I saw that, I immediately thought  of Freddie and the Dreamers singing “How do you do what you do to me, I wish I knew, if I knew how you do it to me, I would do it to you,” circa 1966 (I’m not going to look it up, but that’s definitely within 2 or 3 years).  Alas, they  were not an important enough group to even be considered in the survey.

(whoops. I did look it up, and it  was Gerry and the Pacemakers.  A lot of what we remember isn’t true, so how the hell can we trust history?)

It’s not surprising, really.  Some combination of words had to be in the top spot.  It was obviously going to be some common words.  Short, simple words, because they’re easy to rhyme.  Also, both do and you can be put at the end of lots of different sentences and still make sense.  So, I don’t think it’s surprising.  Do you?